Well, it is that time of year.  The news cycle starts to slow down on college athletics.  The two major sports – football and basketball – are both in the offseason.  As there is nothing concrete to talk about, the mind starts to wander.  As we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks, coaches just can’t keep their mouth shut.  Our own JB popped off on the future of point guard Brandon Triche.  But for the purpose of this discussion, I would like to point you over to the opinionated and apparently very bored octogenarian Joe Paterno.

As well chronicled by TNIAAM, PapaJoe would love to see the Big 10 swell to that elusive but oh so fruitful 12th game, which means playoffs and of course more dollars.  We already know that the powers that be would love nothing more than to control this whole BCS ponzi scheme for themselves, as evidenced by their now secret ballot.  I’m not going to revisit the arguments of stealing teams from other BCS programs (thank you ACC) or non BCS programs (thank you Big East).  Everyone has an opinion on that.  I’m talking about getting radical.

And of course we know that a certain president would love to turn the BCS into a bonafide playoff.

Obama: “I think any sensible person would say that, if you’ve got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season and many of them have one loss or two losses, there’s no clear, decisive winner, that we should be creating a playoff system. Eight teams, that would be three rounds to determine a national champion. It would — it would add three extra weeks to the season. You could trim back on the regular season. I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So I’m going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

So as I got to thinking, since it is the offseason and time for some crazy thoughts.  Why not blow up the BCS and while we are at it, the entire landscape of college football?

Here’s what I have in mind if President Obama made me the czar of college football:

1)  Close up membership.  There are 120 programs playing football at the Div-I level.  I’ll eschew the use of FCS in describing these programs since it is a BCS term and I am abolishing the BCS.  Sorry Delaware.  The 120 works out perfectly for what I am about to do in the next step.  Besides many of these programs stink and we really don’t need to be adding more.

2)  Take the 120 teams and form 12 new conferences comprising of 10 teams.  Why 12 ten team leagues and not 10 twelve team leagues you ask?  Well the schedule works out perfectly in 10 team leagues.  Each team would play 9 conference games and have 3 left for their OOC slate.  No odd schedules here.

Now I’m not talking about keeping the same power conferences.  Say good-bye to the Pac 10, the SEC, ACC, Big 10 (which obviously can’t count higher than that), Big 12, and Big East.  Say hello to balance.

I want to take the existing conferences and do this to them:

Now you’re probably thinking that instead of this above nuclear holocaust to the BCS landscape, I have may gone off into this realm of mushroom clouding:

But here me out on this before you think I got happy with the shrooms.  My conference breakdowns are very regional and the 3 OOC games should allow long time rivals to continue to play. So here then is my proposed new conferences (Bold teams are current BCS schools:

Big Eastern Conference:

BC, UConn, Pitt, Penn St, Rutgers, Syracuse, Maryland, Army, Buffalo, Temple

Comments – 7 BCS schools, natural Pitt/Penn St rivalry back.

Wacky Tobacky Conference:

Clemson, SC, Ga Tech, NC, NC St, Duke, Wake, Vir, Va Tech, ECU

Comments:  9 BCS schools, I had a hard time breaking up the ACC schools since they are so centralized.

Greater Florida Conference:

Georgia, Florida, Florida St, Miami, USF, UAB, Troy, Central Florida, Florida Atl, Florida Int

Comments:  5 BCS schools, kept the “cocktail party” intact, more typical of how my breakdowns went.

Deep South Conference:

LSU, Ole Miss, Miss St, Ala, Auburn, Southern Miss, Tulare, La-Laf, La-Monroe, La-Tech

Comments:  Whole lotta Bayou flavor here and Alabama/Auburn rivalry intact.

Mid-East Conference:

Ohio St, Cincy, Louisville, KY, West Vir, Western KY, Miami OH, Bowling Green, Marshall, Ohio

Comments: Ohio St may feel slighted, too f’in bad.

Big Central:

Ill, NW, ND, Purdue, Ind, Akron, Kent St, Toledo, N Ill, Ball St

Comments:  Large screw job on ND, serves them right for not going Big East or Big 10

Great White North Conference:

Minn, Iowa, Wisc, Mich, Mich St, Iowa St, E Mich, C Mich, W Mich, Navy

Comments:  Take off ya hoser!  Navy a bit misplaced but couldn’t really help it.

Mid-South Conference:

Missouri, Okla, Okla St, Tenn, Vandy, Arkansas, Tulsa, Ark St, Middle Tenn, Memphis

Comments: Interesting fusion of  SEC and Big 12

Big Texas Conference:

Texas, Baylor, A&M, Texas Tech, Houston, Rice, SMU, UTEP, TCU, North Texas

Comments: Welcome back SWC – sorta.  Travel shouldn’t be a issue here.  I’m sure the folks in Ft Worth would love a crack at the Longhorns on a yearly basis.

Rocky Plains Conference:

Colorado, Kansas, Kansas St, Nebraska, BYU, Air Force, Colo St, NM, NM St, Wyoming

Comments:  What could be more oxymoronic than the league name.  Teams lack current pizzaz but so what.

Northwest Divide Conference:

Ore, Ore St, Wash, Wash St, Utah, Utah St, Idaho, Boise St, UNLV, Nevada

Comments:  Here’s your shot Utah and Boise, let’s see what you do with it!

Great Western Conference:

Cal, USC, UCLA, Stanford, Ariz, Ariz St, SD St, Fresno St, SJ St, Hawaii

Comments:  Seems about the same level of difficulty for the Trojans, they can thank me for removing Ore St.

So there you have it.  Take this mess, give every conference winner a bid and then pick the next best 4 via some selection committee not by computer/poll and have yourself a good ol 16 team winner takes all tourney.  Yeah, I blew alot of rivalries away with this config, but I think there are enough patsies in all these conferences that the OOC should be really strong for the major players.  If it’s not then they deserve to stay home.

Now all I need is for a certain President to give me a call…

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 11:16 am by LvilleOrange . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.